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立 政 治 大 學
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1. Introduction
With the advent of new technology in the financial industry, this is a good time for financial institutions to introduce and use advanced technologies to enhance operational efficiency to gain competitive advantages. Therefore, this paper explores how an insurance company could improve its casualty insurance department’s performance and efficiency. The introduction can be separated into four parts: research background information, the purpose of research, research questions, and an overview of the paper.
1.1. Research Background Information
According to 金融監督管理委員會保險局 【金管會保險局】 （2020）, Taiwan has seventeen local property insurance companies and seven foreign property insurance companies at the end year of 2019. The market size of non-life insurance in Taiwan in 2019 was approximately NT$177.13 billion. The non-life insurance market in Taiwan can be divided into fire insurance, marine insurance, automobile insurance, aviation insurance, engineering insurance, liability insurance, credit insurance, accident insurance, and health insurance. The primary insurance premium income is from fire insurance and automobile insurance in which the automobile insurance accounts for 53.44% while fire insurance shared with 14.61% of the total insurance premiums in 2019.
Over recent years, casualty insurance has become a vital role in the non-life insurance market.
One of the main reasons is the increasing focus on information security. Aon Public Limited Company [Aon] (2019) found that the number of companies purchasing cyber insurance in the global market grew from 21% to 54% during the period from 2015 to 2019. This trend might have stimulated some companies to buy cyber insurance. Also, as compliance with the
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國立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
establishment of the board of directors of listed companies in Taiwan amended（金融監督管 理委員會【金管會】，2019）, more demand for purchasing directors and supervisors liability insurance has arisen. Furthermore, the Executive Yuan has already sent a draft of the Agricultural Insurance Law to Legislative Yuan to review since July 22, 2019（楊芳苓、曾耀 民 ，2020 ） . Property insurance companies thus have developed a growing number of agricultural insurance products.
The industry usually combines liability insurance and other non-life insurance as casualty insurance. However, the combination of casualty insurance might be different from company to company. For example, some property insurance companies regard liability insurance, engineering insurance, and other non-life insurance as casualty insurance. Other corporations might add aviation insurance into the category.
1.2. Purpose of Research
The purpose of the study reported here was to explore how to improve operational efficiency for a casualty insurance department in a property insurance company through analyzing in-depth interview questionnaire respondents answered and reviewing other relevant existing materials. This report aims to propose possible recommendations from different angles to a casualty insurance department in a non-life insurance company for reform and property insurance companies to reconsider their business strategies.
To ensure that suggestions for improving a casualty insurance department’s efficiency are to meet property insurance companies’ needs, interviews on experts who work for a non-life insurance company must be carried out to explore feasible solutions. However, the research for improving the efficiency of the casualty insurance department has not been studied yet.
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國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
The present study intends to examine what non-life insurance companies should do or change to achieve better performance or increase operational efficiency for their casualty insurance department.
1.3. Research Questions
In view of the preceding research purpose, three specific research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:
Which areas should an insurance company in the non-life insurance industry change to improve its casualty insurance department’s performance and operational efficiency?
What should a non-life insurer do to change its operating systems, employee training, authority policy, and marketing strategies for improving the efficiency of its casualty insurance department?
To simplify underwriting procedures and improve the operational efficiency of a casualty insurance department, how should an insurance company introduce AI or robots to deal with daily routines?
1.4. Overview of the Paper
For the above objectives to be achieved, the article is structured as follows. The first section deals with the foundation for the development of the research. The research methodology is presented in the next section, along with full details of the participants in the research as well as the instrument and procedures used. Then the results are presented, with an analysis of the description of interviews from respondents. Finally, conclusions are presented, and suggestions are made for non-life insurance companies as references to improve their casualty insurance department’s operational efficiency.
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The purpose of this chapter is to explain the research method in this research. Hence, it can be divided into four parts. The first part is regarding participants. The next section is about the questionnaire. Third, it focuses on the data collection procedure. Furthermore, the final piece is concerning analyses of interview results.
2.1. Participants
The participants in this research include seven people from three different property insurance companies in Taiwan: X Company, MSIG Mingtai Insurance Company Limited, and Cathay Century Insurance Company Limited. Those participants were chosen because they all work for non-life insurance companies. They came from different positions like a system maintenance worker, managing level of a department with underwriting experience, insurance sales representative, or underwriter from the casualty insurance department. An IT worker handles robotic process automation (RPA)1 , the other is a liability insurance underwriting specialist, and they both work for the Cathay Century Insurance Company Limited. Besides, another two participants work for the MSIG Mingtai Insurance Company Limited, and one of them is a senior liability insurance underwriting specialist, and the other is a junior manager of the casualty insurance department. The last three respondents come from the X Company. One of them is an ex-deputy manager in the casualty insurance department. Another of them is the deputy manager of the industrial insurance marketing department, and the final participant is
1 Robotic process automation (RPA) in a new technology with artificial intelligence or metaphorical software robots to deal with repeatable tasks and RPA aims at business process automation to transfer jobs from humans to robots.